Heartland

the scenes. Someone who could twist thread as easily as the Old Man could. Someone-or some cadre of like-minded peers-was making us dance to a tune of their making.

And we were. While I trusted Marielle, and her relationship with Lafoutain was relaxed enough that it seemed like we were with the good guys, this ad-hoc safe house seemed like an act of desperation, a plan that was thrown together at the last minute. The sort of decision made in the heat of the moment, without proper consideration for all the ways it could go wrong. There was something amiss in this place, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Four Architects dead. How many left? The Chorus twisted around the question. Three, I thought. Delacroix had mentioned them a few minutes ago: the Mason, the Scryer, and the Thaumaturge. Was the Mason working alone, or was the conspiracy broader than that?

Who stood to gain the most?

La Societe Lumineuse had a pyramid-shaped hierarchical organization. One man at the top, hundreds at the bottom, and each layer fed into the one above it. One Hierarch, supported by seven Architects who were drawn from a field of twenty-one Preceptors. Each Preceptor sponsored a Protector-Witness- his eyes on the ground, so to speak-in addition to having a coterie of Viators-warriors well-versed in the way of magick. Below the Viators were the Travelers and Journeymen. Seven ranks, each of the lower rank having seven sub-degrees within it. Highly ordered, highly stratified, and everyone knew their place within the structure of the pyramid. Power flowed up, and the bottom rank was constantly jostling against their betters in an effort to make room for one of them to advance.

The way to force the issue was ritual combat. Properly declared and Witnessed, it was an acknowledged power grab, a calling out by juniors of their betters, and other than the standardized trials for rank and degree, it was the only way to advance in the organization. Ritus concursus. The right of might to declare itself.

However, this sort of willy-nilly leapfrogging wasn't the way the top of the pyramid was organized. The Architects, secretly chosen by the Hierarch, were his named successors. Cristobel's flip response to my jibe about the Secret Masters of the Illuminati aside, the identity of the Architects was protected so that they weren't targets for the overly eager and impetuous. If the Hierarch grew too ill to fulfill his duties as the Silent Guardian Who Waits, then he was replaced by one of his Architects. They, in turn, elevated a fellow Preceptor into the power vacuum of the empty Architect spot. And so on down the pyramid.

Cristobel had likened the assault on the chapel to the Blitzkrieg of Nazi Germany, that swift and decisive surgical strike into the enemy's heartland before they knew it was coming. If the Opposition had known who Cristobel was, then it followed that they knew the identity of the others as well. Send out synchronized strike teams, hit all your targets at one time, and you ended up with a situation much like the one we were currently in.

Lafoutain scratched his beard. 'You're thinking awfully hard over there, M. Markham. I can smell the neurons burning.'

If the Architects were supposed to fill in for the Hierarch, and were his chosen ones, then why had Philippe come to me? Why had the pyramid been shattered? Why me, Old Man?

The doorbell chimed, splintering the swirling mass of the Chorus. What had been forming in them-that niggling detail so frustratingly elusive-vanished. Gone, like a curl of cigarette smoke into the evening air.

Lafoutain wiped his hands on the nearest suitable cloth, which happened to be his shirt. 'Finally.' He strode into the hallway.

'Must be the food,' I said.

Marielle nodded absently. She picked up the discarded knife and hacked off a corner of the shrinking block of cheese. 'You know who attacked the chapel.' It wasn't a question.

'Yes, Cristobel-' I caught myself. 'The first thing they did was shut down access to the grid. Cristobel couldn't draw any power. Then, they sent in their goons. Redirecting energy flow like that is geomantic magick. There's only one Architect who specializes in that school of thought.'

'And you think he's hiding himself to confuse us? If we can't reach him, we assume he's dead like the others.'

'If you were taking on an opposing force that was probably-at least in raw numbers-larger than yours, yeah, I would. It'd be the tactically smart thing to do.'

Lafoutain bustled back into the kitchen with a clutch of plastic bags in either hand. Two more men trailed behind him, carrying more of the same. They swarmed around us, clearing space on all available surfaces to lay out take-out containers. Marielle and I grabbed our wine glasses, the wine pull, and the unopened bottle, and got out of the way.

The newcomers were young-early twenties, wet-behind-the-ears Journeymen, still eager to do the menial tasks. They had been sent out on a quick food run, but it was clear they had over-compensated. The counters were filling fast with a variety of exotic choices. Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian: the mix of curries, spices, and sauces made my head spin and my mouth water.

Lafoutain didn't even bother with a plate. He dumped half of one container into another and then filled the space with vegetables and meat from the next two boxes. 'Eat,' he said, waving a pair of chopsticks at us. 'Help us make some room. This may be the last hot meal any of us has for a long time.'

'Fatalist,' Marielle said, but she went to the cabinets and found a pair of plates.

'Pragmatist,' he replied, shoving an egg roll in his mouth.

My stomach agreed with him.

XII

While the others came down to the kitchen to mob the take-out, Lafoutain led Marielle and me into the dining room. Delacroix glared at me as we passed in the hall, and judging by the expression on a few other faces, no one was terribly pleased to meet Marielle's new friend.

I could imagine their reaction if they knew the rest of it.

The dining room was in disarray. Chairs were scattered around the table, a collection of energy drink cans were piled in the corner of the room, and the top of the table was covered with newspaper effigies, sigil pages (scraps of paper covered with symbolic script done in heavy permanent marker), cheap tourist trinkets and other pewter icons used in warding, the stubs of a few candles: the signs of many hours of occult work. At the far end of the table, written out across several pages taped together, was a series of concentric circles, covered with handwritten scrawl and a scattering of black dots.

The working model of the society's network reminded me of a two-dimensional representation of the Tree of the Sephiroth, circles within circles. In the middle-Ain Soph Aur, the central point from which all light emanated-was the Hierarch, and floating throughout the concentric rings were small circles marked with names. The twenty-one Preceptors. More than half of them were filled in, and beside four of them were their Architect titles, written in all caps.

THE VISIONARY: Father David Cristobel. Dead.

THE HERMIT: Emile Frobai-Cantouard. Dead.

THE CRUSADER: Matthew Wincott. Dead.

THE NAVIGATOR: Pierre Juneaux. Dead.

I found Jacob Spiertz on the map. There was no title next to his name. They didn't know.

'It doesn't look good.' Lafoutain gave voice to what we were all thinking.

I put my half-empty plate down and leaned over the diagram, reading some of the notes scrawled across the page. Names of the rank, with lines connecting them in a desperate attempt to chart allegiances. This wasn't all of them, not by a long shot, just the names of Watchers who could be clearly identified as belonging to one school of thought or another.

Once a magus reached Viator, a choice was declared-a rubric of occult study that took one under the aegis of one of the Architects. I had always thought it was an educational and vocational choice, but looking at the tangle of